beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

So I've been thinking about the stuff that doesn't show up in transcripts.

It's great having all the words all in a row, very handy. But it strips away everything else - costumes, settings, all of that stuff, and a lot of effort goes into that stuff.

Sometimes the reason for a particular setting is "it started raining" or "we hired the location for four days". But that isn't the effect of it. Or, effects, plural, since always they do several things.

So, in the extras it suggested that the conversation with Owen and Diane where she waxes lyrical about the plane's engine was indoors because of rain. But what happens is you get a contrast between her plane stuck inside with no sky to be in and all those cessnas outside but hired by other people. Double woe! Two ways to be trapped! Her plane is furthest away from flying, and she can't get in any other. Which works out real well.

Sometimes you get conversations where things are happening in more than one location, like if they're both on the phone. Or that bit in 1-07 that was a bitch to transcribe cause I wanted to put in every time Tosh was talking over images of elsewhere. Tosh talking and Jack in the images does some lovely things, with keywords that apply to moody-Jack-on-a-roof and tie in her story to his without us actually learning much more about Jack. Nicely done.

1-08 where Jack is on the phone to the police lady, you get a lovely contrast in settings. Torchwood are a small team huddled around a very swish computer, currently non-functional, in the dark. The police are in a large office, bit of a desk farm but well lit for the time of day, lots and lots of people, and a bunch of computers that might not be swish but are actually working. You get a lovely visual contrast between the kind of workaday office thee and me might have spent time in and the gorgeous steampunk meets cyberpunk effect in the Hub, but you also get the way Team Torchwood are in fact isolated in there, whereas the police can wander in and out, congregate in large numbers, phone a friend, all sorts of useful large group things.

Also, there's laughing.
... I suspect, but would have to check a lot to prove, that laughing within Team Torchwood is usually about whoever is not laughing. Like, 1-04 you get Team-minus-Ianto being happy, and 1-07 you get Gwen+Owen-Tosh.
Whereas mocking Torchwood is a fun teambuilding exercise for all the police in earshot. Which actually makes it a police-Torchwood moment, and again about who isn't laughing. huh.

Other times in 1-08 we get two pairs of people in cars talking on mobile communication devices, and there it's about the compare contrast. Hunter hunted, earpiece looking shiny or mobile phone looking stolen, one person unconscious vs conscious and supplying expertise.

Because the two different settings are talking to each other we get very direct comparisons going on.

Often on Torchwood you get conversations that are happening between two different settings. Which I notice because I keep trying to write it down. It makes room for a greater variety of visuals than the thing where people sit next to each other or opposite or behind or whatever and do talking in one shot. It also splits them up and leaves them isolated even while they communicate.


My favourite example of good use of communications tech to build tension isn't one of those times when the phones cut out - which can easily get a bit cheap. It's from Ultraviolet, that sequence where one is locked in a warehouse waiting and the other is racing to meet him and they know he'll be too late. They can talk, but talking is going to do sod all. So instead of decreasing tension to be able to share it winds it up in new and interesting ways because now someone is just going to have to listen to whatever happens next.
Love that.

Torchwood cuts the comms at strategic moments in 1-04, 1-06 and 1-08. Also has Owen out of contact in 1-11. And Jack&Tosh have to resort to low tech non-synchronous communication, which actually shouldn't have worked, in 1-12. So being cut off is a regular feature.

BtVS only seemed to use phones that one time in the basement, to make the funny about reception.

... I liked it in one of the new not-JLI comics where someone is on their mobile phone calling from hell, and instead of getting them out the person they're calling is all woah trying to find out which plan they're on. Cause, you know, great reception. Though I suspect the roaming charges would be spectacular.

Doctor Who used phones mostly to communicate from the far future to people's parents. Which is kind of odd once I notice it. Though there was also the bit in Boom Town, which was much better.


Okay, run out of thought. Shall leave it all splodgy like that and go read some more.